Twenty-six
years ago, as a young theology student, Manuel Campos fled Portugal one
step ahead of the secret police. Just before the fascist dictator Marcelo
Caetano fell in 1974, Campos discovered his name on a list of

"I'm
a German citizen now, and they still see me as a foreigner,"
says Turkish immigrant Mahmut Aktas, a chief steward at DaimlerChrysler.
"They don't like it if I have a more-skilled and better-paid
job than many native Germans have." Credit: David Bacon

people about to be arrested. A priest got him out of the country, and
Campos suddenly found himself in Germany, a young man with no prospects,
few skills and a head full of radical ideas.

He arrived at the end of a long wave of immigration, promoted by big
companies that advertised for contract workers throughout southern Europe.
Asylum seekers like Campos were part of the mix, welcomed at a time when
Germany's labor supply was low, and the need for educated workers was
high. He wound up in an auto plant. "I saw the assembly lines filled with
immigrants like myself," he remembers. "When I came here there was nothing
for us. We had either fled our countries, like me, or we were looking
for a way to send enough money home so that our families would survive.
Lots of us were here for both reasons."

Campos didn't forget the experience. Today he heads a unique department
in the big German industrial union, IG Metall, where he organizes immigrant
workers. He moves with frenetic energy - his fingers race through piles
of paper as he talks a mile a minute, pulling out charts and numbers to
back up his point: Immigrants have had a big impact on the German workplace.